gritty musings...Bright Shiny Pennies

Sunday the fifth of July..(The beautiful girl chuckles every time I tell this story..makes her giggle.)   Its 1969 and my family is on its yearly pilgrimage to the florida keys.We are stopped in one of the nameless gas stations on a-1-a in Dillon South Carolina.  I jump outta the back of the camper truck, amazed at the green beauty that is the south.  Sweet air ... nothing like south eastern pa in the winter.   I survey everything that is a bustling, south carolina truck stop,  And then i see it...   a sign over the water fountain.   colored.   What!!!!..., I look around for any other sign that says..;"stop here for the Dillon's amazing colored water"...my 11 year old mind runs rampant with what will happen when I push the foot pedal...the south is so cool...   no snow and colored water...this is great!..and as I reach my lips to what is going  to be the most awesome water on the planet...before I get one sip of Dillon's fantastic ...

So... I arrive back in the states.  I was out of country for the better part of half a year and for the mid term elections.  Here in Florida there was a medical marijuana referendum and some train stuff and oh yeah, a governor to unseat. Nationally there were seats up for grabs, with our future in the balance.  On the night of the elections I was sitting in a local cantina with a group of ex pats.  As we watched the sickening results trickle in over the bbc.  I sat stunned  So when the conversation restarted and I had washed the vomit from my big lebowski t shirt.  What really amazed me about this group, and really all groups of displaced Americans I have met in my travels, is... they are mostly conservative.  I don't know why this is a surprise.  To live outside the states takes money.  Money to get there.  Money to buy a place.  Money to live.  Money to drink.  Liberals tend to vacation...

so...i'm here once again...back on the tiny island, surrounded by deep turquoise sea...people speak a language, despite Rosetta stone..,  still so very fast and foreign to me...i'm trying to teach  a core of students, so eager to learn... but the teacher is speaking martian...sometimes I am really amazed that life's path has brought me here..i'm taken back twenty some years...  standing on a corner in tsai kung, china.. looking around the sleepy village...just 35 kilometers from Hong Kong..not a sign in English, and definitely the only person who looked like me standing on that street corner I was an urbanophobic thirty something that never, ever ventured into Philly,... I never left the security of a pot smoke and hazy existence in Chester county pa. please don't get me wrong   it wasn't a bad life...life was easy, needs were met..I had a great woman to share my life with and a really sweet dog, lifelong friends were within a phone calls grasp...I played vol...

so in august i was enticed..venture south..build a dream restaurant on a space that holds a dear, dear place in my heart... blue water and my food...looking out the windows of the space to the turquoise waters of the Caribbean...live in a Mexican town...challenge myself to be better  it was all so exciting... so complementary... after years of honing what I do, a chance to go somewhere far away,.. and push it.. to teach what i do to people where the language would be an issue... where the food, the intrinsic food of a region could be joined with what i do .. a .new kitchen , brand new equipment (only a chef  knows how exciting that is!!)  so a few plane rides and cocktails later i was on my way..there were promises made, but there always are...a handshake was exchanged..the only agreement that ever matters between two people committed to something as hard as birthing a restaurant... but as it has in so many instances, the situation changed and the dream drifted away..t...